President Moon’s New Southern Policy has enabled South Korea to sidestep pressure to participate in the Quad and demonstrate its wide-ranging support for regional security, albeit in a non-traditional context.
South Korea’s promotion of a new regional foreign policy to strengthen ties with ASEAN (and with India in South Asia) helps to offset the danger that South Korea will be entrapped in a shooting war with China, and be drawn into military partnership with the US as part of its emerging Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy.
The New Southern Policy (NSP), launched by Moon in 2017, has been a deliberate effort to break away from the past pattern of big power relations in East Asia, dominated historically by China, the US, Japan and Russia. The first South Korean leader to visit all 10 member states of ASEAN, Moon has focused on the association precisely because of its long-standing commitment to sovereignty and independence, and its rejection of the efforts by outside powers to impose a single, dominant Indo-Pacific narrative. ASEAN’s inclusive and flexible Indo-Pacific Outlook, first articulated in 2019, resonates with Seoul’s concentration on the economic and cultural aspects of regional collaboration – themes that were at the heart of the 30th anniversary conference of the ASEAN–South Korea dialogue partnership in 2019.
South Korea’s Southeast Asian regional agenda is defined by the relatively anodyne and inclusive notions of ‘people, prosperity and peace’ (first articulated in 2018 with the creation of the Presidential Committee on the New Southern Policy). This is a vision that provides little, if any, space for the discussion of conventional hard security issues; Seoul has, for the most part, deliberately sidestepped initiatives that require a military commitment in the region. Although South Korean defence companies have signed bilateral arms deals with some countries in the region, most notably with Indonesia, Moon has since 2017 batted away repeated requests from the US to play a more active role in regional US military action.
South Korea has no direct territorial claims in the South China Sea, and it has studiously avoided joining the Quad – the fledgling four-power strategic partnership between Japan, the US, India and Australia. South Korean naval forces did participate in US-led Pacific Vanguard exercises, along with Japan and Australia in 2019, but it is not clear whether the US has directly requested that South Korean vessels participate in Freedom of Navigation Operations to offset the growing maritime challenge posed by China. In 2019, Moon strengthened his rhetorical support for the concept of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific, and there has been at least one instance – in 2018 – when a South Korean anti-piracy vessel intruded within 12 nautical miles of Chinese-claimed territory in the South China Sea, an event that appears to have been unpremeditated but which prompted a protest from the Chinese government.
Seoul’s NSP concentrates on unconventional issues such as healthcare, education, infrastructure provision and the digital economy, smart cities, climate change management, gender equality, policing and water security.
Overall, Seoul is intent on avoiding any further security-based entanglements in the region. Even following the launch in August 2020 of a new US–South Korea Indo-Pacific Strategy–New Southern Policy Dialogue, the focus for this partnership is very much in the realm of non-traditional security cooperation and rhetorical support for ‘the principles of openness, inclusiveness, transparency, respect for international norms and ASEAN centrality’. Seoul’s NSP concentrates on unconventional issues such as healthcare, education, infrastructure provision and the digital economy, smart cities, climate change management, gender equality, policing and water security.
Reaching out to South and Southeast Asia enables South Korea to diversify its foreign economic policy, developing fledgling new investment and trade opportunities that can offset its heavy reliance on the Chinese market. At the same time, it has powerful political and economic reasons to want to avoid getting drawn into an intensifying, US-led confrontation with China.
The centripetal pull of the Chinese economy remains strong and China’s global developmental policy has offered concrete opportunities for South Korean firms – a reality that helps explain Seoul’s decision to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in 2015. Moreover, Moon has been keen to secure a visit to Seoul by Xi. The August meeting in Busan between National Security Adviser Suh Hoon and Chinese Politburo member Yang Jiechi, along with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s three-day visit to Seoul in late November 2020, suggest that planning for such a visit remains important to both the Koreans and the Chinese. Such bilateral meetings are evidence of the interdependency of the two countries politically and substantively.
Economically, both countries can benefit from COVID-19 cooperation, expansion of their free-trade agreement, the potential revitalizing trade benefits for South Korean firms such as Samsung looking for a post-pandemic export and investment recovery, and the advantages that might arise from linking China’s Belt and Road Initiative with South Korea’s New Southern and New Northern policies.
Seoul’s more activist approach in Southeast Asia neatly bolsters the image of South Korea as a broadly autonomous and innovative policy entrepreneur. It is debatable how much influence it has secured in Southeast Asia (especially since South Korean trade and investment ties with the region are still eclipsed by its economic relationship with China). Yet there is little doubt that the New Southern Policy is a sign that Seoul is serious about raising its profile and strengthening ties in the region. The policy enables cooperation with the US on non-traditional, but nonetheless vital security issues without being drawn into a military stand-off with China; and it permits new, reinvigorated partnerships with countries and institutions that are keen to avoid being drawn into an intensifying and potentially zero-sum clash of interests between the world’s number one and number two powers.